The New Normals Chapter 2

The back seat of Kit’s car was a jumbled mess. The fishing rod was propped up against the rear window, so bent now that it was unlikely to be used for a fishing trip any time soon. The hastily packed suitcase seemed to have bursted at the seams, leaving everything from toothpaste and floss to a fairly eccentric-looking collection of assorted socks and ties to be welcomed into the heaping jumble of objects teetering around on the floor. The bungee chords that struggled to keep it held shut lay discreetly within the clutter, coiled up in apparent shame. Beneath a broken coffee mug and one of the flippers from Kit’s scuba gear, lay the patrolman, looking increasingly stiff and colorless by the minute.

In the passenger seat, Roland looked composed, the officer’s baton rolling back and forth between his palm and fingers as he sat with a subtle smirk of self-satisfaction across his face. Kit was so feverishly anxious that he allowed his anger to lay dormant. He drove along, searching compulsively for a radio station with good enough reception to distract him from what had transpired. Thunder continued to roll and the sky remained its darkened shade.

“I don’t suppose you have a shovel back there do you?”

Roland rightly interpreted Kit’s uneasy silence as a “no.”

After fifteen minutes or so, the rain had lightened into a drizzle, but the sky above was no less ominous. “Right there,” Roland said suddenly, pointing loosely toward what looked only like another gigantic mound of rocks. Kit allowed the car to come to a stop.

“What?” Kit replied, emerging from a stupor.

“Pull over there,” continued Roland, a bit more pressingly. Kit removed the key from the ignition and turned to face Roland directly.

“There’s not even a road — are you crazy?” said Kit, beginning to grow irritated.

Roland stared patiently at Kit, a little expectant. A few seconds passed like this.

“So then… you’d rather carry the corpse over there.”

Kit looked angry, annoyed and defeated as he turned the key in the ignition and they began their short and bumpy trek toward the location Roland had pointed toward. They were little more than a mile out from the main road when Roland said, “Park here.”

Kit parked and sat still for a moment. Roland got out of his seat, opened the door, and stretched his arms and legs with a level of feline indifference that Kit found disconcerting. Kit had just witnessed Roland murder a cop, and here he was stretching like they were in a yoga studio. There was something charming about him, but Kit remembered sociopaths could often be charming, and Kit didn’t want to be charmed. Kit stared at him coldly.

“Isn’t there something about the open desert air you just love?” asked Roland, now purposefully misinterpreting Kit’s death stare.

Kit knew exactly what he meant but he was feeling too annoyed to say so; he settled for a vague nod of agreement. He got out of the car and looked around cautiously, his heart still racing. There were no cars to be seen. Smoldering desert air blew past them as the storm clouds overhead began to dissipate. Kit said nothing.

“Should be an oasis over this hill,” Roland continued anyway.

What Roland had just called a mere hill resembled more of a mountain — with a hill on top — and this didn’t seem lost on him.

Roland motioned toward the car and opened the back door. Brushing aside Kit’s flipper, Roland grabbed the officer’s legs and began to pull him onto the ground. Another expectant look toward Kit spurred him grudgingly into action.

The officer was surprisingly easy to carry. With his belt removed, he seemed ten pounds lighter. The officer was a tall man — a tall corpse. His uniform had done an impressive job at masking how remarkably skinny he was. Still, even in death there was something intimidating enough about his hardened, catatonic stare that Roland opted to let him keep his shades on.

The two clambered up the mountain, hot desert sun now beating down on them as desert sand shifted silently beneath their feet. They needed to stop every few moments in order to strategize how they’d continue to carry the weight-load up the cliff. As flies began to show interest, the two were forced to pick up their pace. Maneuvering their way up the mountain was every bit as difficult as Kit had feared and the soon-to-be-decomposing officer in hand didn’t make matters easier.

Once they made their way to the top, Kit, Roland and the corpse all simultaneously collapsed onto the ground. They wiped the dust off themselves as Roland seemingly pulled a canteen out of thin air. He took a few sips, wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead and held the bottle out to Kit as a peace offering. Kit accepted sourly but thanked him anyway. He couldn’t hide that he was parched. With a little water in him, he stood up, stretched, and breathed in deeply as his pupils began gliding panoramically over the desert below. As his gaze moved over the vast, desolate canyon, over the towering mountains of red rock that shot proudly from its desiccated surface, he let out a sigh of relief.

Kit mused over where he might be if Roland hadn’t killed the officer and found himself repressing laughter. It was unlikely to be an improvement over where he was standing now. Just as that thought occurred to him, a fly buzzed impudently past him and reminded him of the near-spoiling carcass a few feet to his right. His sigh exasperated now, Kit got back onto the ground beside Roland and the bespectacled corpse.

As if on cue, Roland hoisted the officer back into his arms and allowed Kit to do the same. “The oasis should be just over that little hill,” Roland said matter-of-factly. They trudged exhaustedly toward it. As they made their way up and over the final slope, a tiny pool of water came into view.

“It’s a bit shallower than I remembered it…” said a puzzled Roland. Unbothered though, he removed the officer’s shades, fastened a nearby rock to his leg with rope he’d lifted from Kit’s backseat, triple-reinforced it, and kicked his body into the water with the calmness of a retiree pushing a boat from his dock. He cursorily brushed off the glasses and planted them now on his own face as the officer drifted out into what certainly looked more like a gaping puddle than any body of water.

“The glasses?” Kit asked, a cross look on his face.

“Figured he wouldn’t have much use for them in there… they have a nice look to them.” The officer continued floating quietly above the surface and Kit found himself struggling with his anxieties again. After the water bubbled for a moment, the lifeless officer sank gently into it. Roland and Kit looked at each other in reflective, almost farcical, silence.

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